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Miguel Brendl joined the Kellogg School of Management in 2007 after serving on the faculties of INSEAD, Fontainebleau (1999-2007), the University of Heidelberg (1998-99) and the University of Konstanz (1995-1998). He holds a PhD degree from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree form the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Professor Brendl's expertise lies in the psychological foundations of consumer behavior. He is a member of the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the leading academic journals for consumer research. The Journal of Consumer Research has acknowledged his research with the Best Article of the Year 2003 Award. He was founder of the center for behavioral research at INSEAD, Fontainebleau.

His teaching experience comprises marketing and consumer behavior to executives and MBA students, as well as psychology and research methods to PhD students. He does research on how customers form preferences that underlie their judgments and decisions. He focuses on impulsive motivation, hedonic feelings, and intuitive or "gut-feel" decisions. His research has appeared in some of the most prestigious academic journals of marketing and of psychology.

Research on regulatory focus has established a regulatory matching effect : The persuasiveness of a message is enhanced when regulatory orientations of message and perceiver match (i.e., both are promotion or both are prevention). We report evidence that varying the hedonic outcome reverses this effect. We manipulated hedonic outcome by explicitly stating pleasurable versus painful outcomes as part of the message frame as well as by priming perceivers to focus on either pleasurable or painful outcomes. When both message and perceiver were focused on pleasurable outcomes, we replicated the regulatory matching effect. However, the matching effect reversed when the hedonic outcome of the message was opposed to that of the perceiver (i.e., one was pleasurable and the other painful). Under these conditions, messages that mismatched the perceivers� regulatory orientation were more persuasive (i.e., promotion message for a prevention oriented perceiver or vice versa). We also examined the persuasion effects when both message and perceiver were focused on painful outcomes and found that the regulatory matching effect re-emerged. The reversal of the regulatory matching effect by hedonic outcome strongly suggests that hedonic motives (approach of pleasure vs. avoidance of pain) and regulatory focus motives are distinct constructs. This is important because contrary to theoretical statements these constructs have often been confounded.

The classic goal-gradient hypothesis posits that motivation to reach a goal increases monotonically with proximity to the desired end state. However, we argue that this is not always the case. In this article, we show that motivation to engage in goal-consistent behavior can be higher when people are either far from or close to the end state and lower when they are about halfway to the end state. We propose a psychophysical explanation for this tendency to get stuck in the middle." Building on the assumption that motivation is influenced by the perceived marginal value of progress toward the goal, we show that the shape of the goal gradient varies depending on whether an individual monitors progress in terms of distance from the initial state or from the desired end state. Our psychophysical model of goal pursuit predicts a previously undiscovered nonmonotonic gradient, as well as two monotonic gradients.

According to theories on preference construction, multiple preferences result from multiple contexts (e.g., loss vs. gain frames). This implies that people can have different representations of a preference in different contexts. Drawing on Berridge's (1999) distinction between unconscious liking and wanting, we hypothesize that people may have multiple representations of a preference toward an object even within a single context. Specifically, we propose that people can have different representations of an object's motivational value, or incentive value, versus its emotional value, or likability, even when the object is placed in the same context. Study 1 establishes a divergence between incentive value and likability of faces using behavioral measures. Studies 2A and 2B, using self-report measures, provide support for our main hypothesis that people are perfectly aware of these distinct representations and are able to access them concurrently at will. We also discuss implications of our findings for the truism that people seek pleasure and for expectancy-value theories

Estimating the relative frequency of a class of objects or events is fundamental in subjective probability assessments and decision making (Estes, 1976), and research has long shown that people rely on heuristics for making these judgments (Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002). In this report, we identify a novel heuristic for making these judgments, the value heuristic: People judge the frequency of a class of objects on the basis of the subjective value of the objects.

In this study, the authors examined (a) the effect of changes in the need to eat on expressed preferences for foods that are appropriate for different times of day and (b) whether that need is directed toward food in general or foods contextually appropriate to the time of day. Previous findings suggest that, when the goal is active relative to when it is inactive, items relevant to satisfying a goal increase in value but items unrelated to that goal decrease in value. The authors observed that, when people needed to eat, they sought foods that are contextually appropriate to the time of day of the study. Hence, the goal they sought to fulfill was narrower than seeking foods in general.

Respondents in five experiments were more likely to choose a brand when the brand name started with letters from their names than when it did not, a choice phenomenon we call �name letter branding.� We propose that during a first stage an active need to self-enhance increases the positive valence of name letters themselves and that during stage 2 positive name letter valence transfers to product-specific attributes (e.g., taste of a beverage). Accordingly, when respondents form a brand preference (e.g., of beverages), activating a product-specific need (e.g., need to drink) boosts the influence of this (transferred) valence.

Influences of perceptual and motor activity on evaluation have led to theories of embodied cognition suggesting that putatively complex judgments can be carried out using only perceptual and motor representations. We present an experiment that revisited a movement-compatibility effect in which people are faster to respond to positive words by pulling a lever than by pushing a lever and are faster to respond to negative words by pushing than by pulling. We demonstrate that the compatibility effect depends on people's representation of their selves in space rather than on their physical location. These data suggest that accounting for embodied phenomena requires understanding the complex interplay between perceptual and motor representations and people's representations of their selves in space.

This article presents a new response time measure of evaluations, the Evaluative Movement Assessment (EMA). Two properties are verified for the first time in a response time measure: (a) mapping of multiple attitude objects to a single scale, and (b) centering that scale around a neutral point. Property (a) has implications when self-report and response time measures of attitudes have a low correlation. A study using EMA as an indirect measure revealed a low correlation with self-reported attitudes when the correlation reflected between-subjects differences in preferences for one attitude object to a second. Previously this result may have been interpreted as dissociation between two measures. However, when correlations from the same data reflected within-subject preference rank orders between multiple attitude objects, they were substantial (average r = .64). This result suggests that the presence of low correlations between self-report and response time measures in previous studies may be a reflection of methodological aspects of the response time measurement techniques. Property (b) has implications for exploring theoretical questions that require assessment of whether an evaluation is positive or negative (e.g., prejudice), because it allows such classifications in response time measurement to be made for the first time.

It is commonly assumed that an object capable of satisfying a need will be perceived as subjectively more valuable as the need for it intensifies. For example, the more active the need to eat, the more valuable food will become. This outcome could be called a valuation effect. In this article, we suggest a second basic influence of needs on evaluations: that activating a focal need (e.g., to eat) makes objects unrelated to that need (e.g., shampoo) less valuable, an outcome we refer to as the devaluation effect. Two existing studies support the existence of a devaluation effect using manipulations of the need to eat and to smoke and measuring attractiveness of consumer products and willingness to purchase raffle tickets. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that consumers are not aware of the devaluation effect and its influence on their preferences.

Brendl, Miguel, Arthur B. Markman and Claude Messner. 2001. How do Indirect Measures of Evaluation Work? Evaluating the Inference of Prejudice in the Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 81(5): 760-773.

There has been significant interest in indirect measures of attitudes like the Implicit Association Test (IAT), presumably because of the possibility of uncovering implicit prejudices. The authors derived a set of qualitative predictions for people's performance in the IAT on the basis of random walk models. These were supported in 3 experiments comparing clearly positive or negative categories to nonwords. They also provided evidence that participants shift their response criterion when doing the IAT. Because of these criterion shifts, a response pattern in the IAT can have multiple causes. Thus, it is not possible to infer a single cause (such as prejudice) from IAT results. A surprising additional result was that nonwords were treated as though they were evaluated more negatively than obviously negative items like insects, suggesting that low familiarity items may generate the pattern of data previously interpreted as evidence for implicit prejudice.

Markman, Arthur B. and Miguel Brendl. 2000. The Influence of Goals on Value and Choice. Psychology of Learning and Motivation. 39: 97-128.

When making decisions, people group gains and losses. The way they choose to form these groupings, called "mental accounting" affects their decisions. Mental accounting is a powerful and intuitively compelling phenomenon. To this point, however, little attention has been devoted to the psychological principles that underlie mental accounting. In this article we explore the psychological processes that set up mental accounts and assign gains or losses to these accounts. We propose that (a) currently active goals set up mental accounts, and (b) gains and losses are weighted into these accounts proportionally to their representativeness to the goal that set up the account. We review existing evidence that supports this goals-representativeness view of mental accounting and describe new studies designed to test these proposals. We also review other choice phenomena (e.g., sunk costs and entrapment) in which mental accounting is involved. We suggest that mental accounting is a useful self-regulatory strategy, despite the fact that it can sometimes lead to irrational choices. (An English translation of this paper can be requested from the authors).

Individuals with varying levels of chronic accessibility for the construct "conceited" read about a target person and gave their spontaneous impressions of the target's behaviors. The construct "conceited" was either contextually primed or not, and the priming-to-stimulus delay was either short or long. The stimulus behaviors also varied in applicability to the construct "conceited," with three different types of non-"unambiguous" stimuli being examined. The stimulus behaviors were either only weakly related to "conceited" (vague), strongly and equally related to both "conceited" and "self-confident" (ambiguous), or more strongly related to self-confident than to "conceited" (contrary). We found that the extremely vague target behaviors yielded conceited-related spontaneous impressions when the accessibility of the construct conceited was maximized - contextual priming [without awareness], short priming-to-stimulus delay, and relatively high levels of chronic accessibility. This result supports the "activation rule" that strong accessibility can compensate for weak applicability. Two other activation rules were suggested by the results for the ambiguous and the contrary stimuli, respectively: (a) higher accessibility can yield stronger judgments even when perceivers are aware of contextual priming events if the additional contribution to activation from applicability and chronic accessibility is sufficiently great, and (b) the relation between higher accessibility and stronger judgments is constrained when the applicability of a competing alternative construct is both strong and stronger than the target construct's applicability.

Brendl, Miguel and E. T. Higgins. 1995. Sensitivity to varying Gains and Losses: The Role of Self-Discrepancies and Event Framing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 69(6): 1028-1051.

Three studies psychophysically measured people's discrimination among different sizes of monetary net gains or net losses. Participants imagined either gains or nonlosses (i.e., net gains) or losses or nongains (i.e., net losses). Participants discriminated more when the identical event was framed as the presence (gains and losses) versus the absence (nonlosses and nongains) of an outcome, presumably because the latter is harder to represent. Discrimination was enhanced when the motivational features of the imagined event were either both the same as or both different from a person's self-discrepancy. Discrimination was reduced when only one of the motivational features was different. A model of excitations, inhibitions, and disinhibitions between mental representation is suggested to account for these findings.

Book Chapters

Markman, Arthur B., Miguel Brendl and Kyungil Kim. 2009. "From Goal-Activation to Action: How Does Preference and Use of Knowledge Intervene?." In The Psychology of Action, edited by Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Bargh, and Peter M. Gollwitzer, vol. 2: Mechanisms of Human Action, 328-349. New York: Oxford University Press.

Markman, Arthur B., Miguel Brendl and Kyungil Kim. 2007. "From Goal-Activation to Action: How Does Preference and Use of Knowledge Intervene?." In The Psychology of Action, edited by Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Bargh, and Peter M. Gollwitzer, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition.

Brendl, Miguel. 2001. "Goals and the Compatibility Principle in Attitudes, Judgment, and Choice." In Cognitive Social Psychology: The Princeton Symposium on the Legacy and Future of Social Cognition, edited by Gordon B Moskowitz, 317-332. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Brendl, Miguel. 2000. "Subjective Experience in the Effect of Sample Size on Likelihood Judgments." In The Message Within: The Role of Subjective Experience in Social Cognition and Behavior, edited by Herbert Bless and Joseph P Forgas, 69-87. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Teaching Interests

Consumer behavior, psychology

Full-Time / Evening & Weekend MBA

Consumer Insight for Brand Strategy (MKTG-458-0) This course covers the field of consumer psychology and provides a systematic framework for analyzing consumer behavior from the standpoint of the marketer. The focus is on generating consumer insights as a necessary basis for developing marketing strategies, as well as for improving marketing mix decisions. The psychological concepts we cover enable marketers to make better use of market research. The course is directed at students preparing for brand/product management, business development, or consulting positions.

Doctoral

Psychological Theory in Consumer Behavior (MKTG-541-0) This course exposes students to psychological concepts and experimental methods that are useful in conducting rigorous consumer behavioral research. The course examines the processes by which individuals make judgments and regulate their behavior. This entails an analysis of how information is represented in memory, and how it is subsequently retrieved and used to make judgments. Issues related to consumer decision making is further explored by examining the moderating effects of decision maker characteristics such as gender and expertise, message factors such as repetition and source credibility, as well as situational factors such as the context in which information is presented. The processes by which decisions are made, how much effort to allocate to making judgments and engaging in various behavior are also discussed.